The Angel Harvest
by criticallyours
Summary: You are cordially invited: Sam & Dean Winchester. Private auction. Angel wings (fully charged with grace) will be auctioned at midnight. Limited quantities available. No weapons zone; no exceptions. [AU s07e23. Destiel/Wing!kink]
1. Prologue: Purgatory For Dummies

**Pairing:** Destiel, romance will be gradual so please bear with me.

**Warning:** I got tricked onto the Destiel ship and it decided to buck into autopilot; so be warned, I'm not controlling this rodeo. Mature language, eventual slash, Wing!kink.

**Setting:** twist on the season 7 finale.

**Note:** guys. Guys. I'm having some sort of writer-crisis here. I've only ever written hetero fics, so this is my first foray into the bushy and prick-y tangles of man-love forest. It's like my writing genre is just discovering its fairy wings – BUT IT'S ONLY EVER BEEN FOR DEAN AND CAS, M'KAY? CUZ THEY'RE ADORABLE AND NEED TO HASH OUT ISSUES IN (sex) THERAPY. I'm just chasing the rainbow-farting unicorn through the wilderness now.

This chapter is just to peg down the foundation. More adventures and sexy times to come!

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**Prologue: Purgatory For Dummies**

_Dean._

_Dean, I must act quickly._

A thin, tinny whistle flossed between his ears, accompanied by deep, bass reverberations. It took him a minute to interpret them correctly as speech, and in that minute realised that he was pinned down in a piercing white light. He thought he'd heard someone call his name.

"-end of the bloody world and you come up short once again, Puft. Your generation is so easily distracted by explosions and sparkly things. Personally, I'd blame the media if I didn't already own it-"

"He was _just here_. How do I know that you and your minions didn't-"

"Well if I'm lucky, they did. And if I'm still lucky, the levis did and my army of _minions_ are plundering and pillaging as we speak, so either way, your loss. And very soon, my gain."

He knew those voices.

Dean blinked, and realized that the only thing that was pinning him down like a bug was gravity, and the white light was coming from the fluorescent lights from the ceiling of the sterile white laboratory. His head throbbed as he pulled himself up to a sitting position by using the desk and shelving unit he was jumbled between, fingers slipping on the black, acrid ooze splattered liberally on them. He blinked again, realizing that it was fucking _everywhere_. Oddly, he was ooze-free.

"Sam?" he croaked.

There was a pregnant pause, then heavy footsteps echoing, and he could actually feel his gargantuan brother galloping towards him. A familiar knot loosened behind his sternum; _Sammy. Sammy's okay_.

Sam's alert and slightly buggy-eyed face swung into view, pale in the harsh fluorescent lighting, his signature chick-hair swinging behind him. "_Dean!_ You- you're alive! You're still here!"

Dean squicked a finger into his ear, trying to dig out the angry kettle as he unsteadily got to his feet with his brother's aid and automatically stood by him defensively. "Still here, relatively unmolested," he answered, mustering some of his sarcasm as he tried to focus. The disorientation and slight deafening were making it hard to string two thoughts together.

"And here I was, hoping you'd gone _boom_ with Dick and Cas," drawled Crowley, casually standing by the doors. His voice was effortlessly wry and dry, but his dark eyes were hard, intense with something like satisfaction.

_Cas_.

Dean whipped around, ignoring the slight wave of nausea as he focused on the biggest splatter of inky ectoplasm on the white tile floor. Ground zero was suspiciously absent of a Dick and a broken angel. Dean's memory snapped back into place – _The Plan_ – Cas bluffed, took the throw, Dean distracted, Cas yanked Dick's head back, and Dean boned him through the throat. Then Dick had started throbbing energy, vibrating, faster and faster while Dean had just watched like a friggin' _idiot_ until Dick had exploded – presumably the blast had flung Dean into the wall and kicked his mind out for recess.

"Where are they?" Dean snapped, balling his fists. Mentally he was taking inventory of his body: nothing seemed to be broken, some throbbing but that only meant bruises. _Need to keep Crowley talking, might be here to finish us off; Ruby's knife still in my belt, Sam can hold him off while I attack, grab Cas and Kevin-_

"That bone has a bit of a kick," Crowley replied gently, a smirk tucked into a corner of his thin lips. "God's weapons often do. Should've put a warning on the box."

"This is exactly what you wanted," Sam realized aloud, accusatory as he glowered down at the smaller man. "Dick out of the way, and revenge on Cas."

Dean froze, muscles locking down.

Crowley smiled and shrugged, brushing Sam off as he turned to look at Dean. "Cut off the head, and the body will flounder, after all. If you had just one king since before the first sunrise you'd be in a kerfuffle too."

"And _Cas_?" Dean snarled.

The shorter man cocked his head and raised a derisive brow. "If he's lucky, he's ceased to exist. But I'm guessing the signature Winchester charm has rubbed off on him, and he's wandering around Purgatory for you as we speak."

A cold blade slowly scraped down each individual vertebrae of Dean's spine. "For me?" he echoed dumbly.

"Dean," Sam murmured softly, shooting him an apologetic look from the side of his eyes. "I saw him push you out of the way just as Dick exploded."

Time splintered as fragments of memories raced through Dean's numb mind, and his eyes vacantly swung to the ooze-free spot he'd woken up in, picturing that flapping trench coat as his own words echoing mutely in his head.

"_You've been chosen. And it sucks, believe me. There's no use asking 'why me?' cuz the angels – they don't care. I think they just don't have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it breaks them apart."_

Hester, leader of the surviving members of the garrison snarling at him through a contorted mask of betrayal:_ "The very _touch_ of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell he was _lost!_"_

That hesitant, wry and warm smile tugging at Cas's lips when the brothers had looked to him for help - just like in the old days. _"Well, you know me. I'm always happy to bleed for the Winchesters."_

He'd been wrong.

"Consider Cas's vacation in Purgatory on me. I did owe him one," Crowley gloated, the manic gleam in his eyes burning. "And without a master plan, the levis are just another monster. Hard to stomp, sure. But then, you love a challenge. _Your_ job is to keep them from organizing."

"Not until-"

"Bring him back."

Sam and Crowley eyed Dean as the muscles in his jaw flexed, recognizing the building pressure in the hunter. "Bring him back _now_, you son of a bitch," Dean bit out.

Crowley huffed a laugh. "Did you actually forget the consequences already? I thought Cas had demonstrated well enough that opening the door to Monster Land isn't the smartest idea." The smile dropped from his lips as he turned a burning glare at Dean, all façade of humour vanished. "I'm sure this will zip in one ear and out the other, being a Winchester and all, but do. Not_. Open that door_. No more sacrificing, deals, or _trading places_, at least not for your feathered boy toy. If, by some miracle, a human like you is able to open the portal, you'd be pulped by the hordes of monsters spewing out from the bowels of Purgatory into this reality, and it'll be the end of the world. _For sure_. Because a human like you doesn't have the juice to stay alive against the monsters, keep them at bay, and close the portal from either side."

Hope and wild plans tumbled through Dean's head as he stubbornly replied, "but demons – or Death –"

"No demon has _ever_ willingly crossed into Purgatory _since the birth of time_," Crowley snapped, "reapers and even Death himself do not go closer to that hole than to kick the freaks into it. That is where their kind go to prey upon each other for the rest of eternity without ever dying, ergo no need for Death to get his shoes dirty."

It was possible then to see a shift behind Crowley's eyes, to almost palpably feel the hulking shadow of the Devil talking through the short British puppet. His black coat seemed to flicker inhumanly at the edges, doubling the idea that the Devil was looming just behind a thin slice of Old English ham.

And it was the sincerity from the king of Hell and liars that convinced him.

Crowley carefully watched Dean, rocked back away from them, shrugging into a more casually human stance again. "I see we understand each other. Now, that's enough _Purgatory For Dummies_. You have, oh," he mimed checking his imaginary wristwatch, "five minutes to get out of here before I set this candy factory on fire."

He was gone with a snap of his fingers.

"Dean, let's go," Sam said urgently, heading to the door.

Dean was already following him when he paused, "where's the – uh – Advanced guy – Kevin?"

Sam's shoulders tensed and his fingers curled in the way Dean knew meant that he was internalizing blame. "I don't know," he admitted, "I shielded him from Dick. I looked to see what had happened, but when I turned around again, he was gone."

They took a right into an emergency stairwell, their hurried footsteps echoing back at them. "So Crowley has him."

"He said he didn't yet," Sam replied between huffs, "but his minions probably got him already."

Dean gritted his teeth from interrogating his brother further, remembering the conversation he'd woken up to. They'd been talking about Kevin being taken by Crowley's demons, not him. _Mission Impossible: Kevin Tran_ had failed. He kept an eye on his brother, vowing to get the screechy prophet back if only for Sam to redeem himself.

He walled up the guilt to deal with later as they ran into a corridor, eyes darting around for enemies. They'd saved the world from the end, again. The faces of Kevin, Meg, Bobby, and Cas flashed through his mind as they dodged a cluster of leviathans slipping around sculptural hills of bubbles, fighting for their lives against demons, and he shoved the familiar, bittersweet blend of roiling guilt and relief down to concentrate on guarding their backs as they fled down the soap-and-blood-scented hall.


	2. SOS

**Note:** I've remembered how ridiculously easy I am to please on this site. One little review, favourite, or follower and I'm bouncing around in my chair, flailing my arms in ecstasy. REVIEWS ARE MY DRUGS. PLEASE DONATE TO A FELLOW FANFIC AUTHOR NEAR YOU.*

*_Please do not attempt to procure or donate illegal substances to fangirls. They may go rabid. _Reviews only!_ Please approach cautiously._

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**Act I: SOS**

"Look, as far as I know angels don't actually have chicken wings," Dean said tiredly to the crisp blue sky. He wiped his greasy hands on the rag he'd brought with him to the back of the scrap yard and took another swig of Johnnie Walker, feeling the alcohol buzz through his veins and warm him in the nippy November weather. He needed to raise his alcohol proof percentage to have this conversation. "If they're there, they're invisible and untouchable. I've only seen the shadows of their wings, or burnt outlines on the ground when they get ganked and deep fried."

There was a slightly nasally hum, and Dean could almost picture the skinny hunter roll his sleepy eyes (which perpetually made him look high) over his bulbous nose. "I dunno, my cousin was pretty sure the auction was for angel _wings_-"

Dean tuned out as he whipped around to see Sam noisily slide out from between two creaking stacks of pancake-d cars, loaded with paper bags and a look on his face as if he were approaching an easily-startled deer, and that annoyingly perpetual _are-you-okay-let's-emote!_ gleam in his soulful hazel eyes.

Dean rolled his own and leaned to the side, making sure that his overly-concerned brother saw the open flip phone resting on the scratched trunk of the Impala.

Sam immediately relaxed and quirked an eyebrow as he handed Dean a takeout bag.

_Garth_, Dean mouthed. His hulking brother's delicate eyebrows raised and the corner of his lips twisted into a slight grimace. Dean shrugged in reply, tuning back into the monologue Garth was spouting.

"'Kay, so angels don't have wings," Garth affirmed, his voice tinny from the speakers cranked on high. "Then what _do_ they look like? I've never seen one."

"Hey Garth. They look like you and me," Sam answered, fishing through his paper bags. "They're kinda like demons in the sense that when they want to walk the earth, they need a human vessel."

"But they have the manners to ask 'please, Mommy may I?' before they take the wheel, Rambo-Jesus-style," Dean said sarcastically before biting into the greasy, nondescript diner burger. "Look man," he mumbled around a near-orgasmic mouthful of bacon and mayonnaise, "this case is a bust. Far be it from me to stop your cousin from hunting the world's most heavenly garlic wings, but they won't be available at a bar near you."

"…Do you think I can ask your or Sam's angel friend for more info?" Garth hesitantly asked, "not that I don't believe you, it's just that Darcy seemed pretty sure about this case."

Dean determinedly kept chewing even as Sam shot a concerned look his way over his organic rabbit food, keeping his gaze trained on glittering piles of wreckage lining the path. He kept chewing, although now it was like each morsel had caused him great offense, and he was taking pleasure in slowly masticating them to pulp, complete with squeaky cries of mercy from his jaws.

Sam rose to the plate, recognizing his brother's signature Denial-and-Repression look. "He's not with us anymore, Garth," he answered, forcefully casual. Despite himself, Dean's sense of humour kicked in again when he noticed how comical his Sasquatch-sized brother looked bending to reassure a tiny silver cell phone on the beat up car.

"Oh. Sorry man," the phone apologized, "uh, thanks for the info. I didn't know anyone else who knew an angel personally."

"No problem," Sam said in that convincing, soothing tone. Boy could therapy his way into every angsty chick's pants if he'd had a mind to use his superpower for himself one day. "Good luck with the hunts."

Dean knocked back the burger with more whiskey as Sam hung up the phone. "Angel wings?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. Maybe it's just angels," Dean reflected absently as he scrounged in the bag for a fry. "They're an endangered species now, aren't they?" He chomped on a crispy end of starchy goodness before exclaiming, "dude, _Victoria Secret Angels auction_!"

A few soppy, wet green chunks spewed out from Sam's mouth as he snorted. "Dude. Porn. Reality. There's a _difference_-"

"Yeah, well, don't tell me you'd rather bust out Gabriel than a posse of Heidi Klums-"

"It's not really a question of _preference_-"

They chuckled a bit, and quietly finished their meal. The sun dipped down to the dusty fields beyond the scrap yard, throwing shadows from the blazing hedges of scrap metal, nostalgically reminding the brothers of how this place was like their personal labyrinth when they were younger. Dean mentally drew constellations between his favourite landmarks in the yard visible from the Impala, enjoying the subtle glow of the laugh and the whiskey, while determinedly ignoring the curdling soup of guilt gnawing at his gut since their escape from Sucrocorp twenty hours ago. There was the Fridge O'Death, where he'd found a decomposing hand in when he was eleven, the slight lump across the clearing marking a body, the bent car hood they'd scribbled on-

"Y'need anything?" Sam asked surveying his brother's handiwork on the Impala. It'd come a long way - it just needed the wheels back on and a new paint job now. "I'm gonna head back to work."

"How's the e-library coming, O nerdy brother of mine?" Dean asked casually as he tidied up the garbage from his baby, grabbing the bottle in one hand and his phone in the other.

Sam picked up the rectangular package resting beside his balled-up takeout bag, almost in exasperation. One end open to reveal a stack of papers inside. "I remembered Bobby squirreling this copy away at the _diner,_ the nutcase. Got that and dinner with one stone," Sam slipped out a paper and frowned down at it. "Don't know how much use it's going to be though. Most of the printed angel lore is hokum." He looked at his overly-casual brother calculatingly, "I'm starting to think we should start writing down the things we know, sorta like Samuel Colt, y'know?"

"Yeah, too bad we can't actually verify the angel stuff," Dean muttered, knocking back a shot. "All of the angels we've ever known are officially dead. Not shot-back-to-heaven-dead, more like an atheist's-game-over-dead." He clamped down, glaring at the sun and almost enjoying how it burned into his retinas. "I never bothered to ask Cas when he was here," the admission was tainted with anger and guilt.

"Hey, neither did I," Sam said, holding out a hand as if to try and break up the fight between Dean and Dean's Guilt once more. "There was always something going on, and Cas was crazy for the last couple months cuz of me. He was our _friend_-"

"Yeah, apparently that's what friends do," Dean interrupted bitterly, facing his brother. "They take an exploding monster and get dragged into Eternal Freakshow Hell, for you. Alone - with _Dick fucking Roman_. And y'know what? I never bothered to ask him how his fucking day went. What the hell an angel even does during the day, or, or if they all have fucking light-up fairy wings they get hunted and killed for-"

A shrill ding interrupted him and Dean seized the chance to clack his teeth together, cramming the words and guilt down as he flipped open the phone, scanning the tiny, blue-tinged LED screen.

Sam bit his lip, seeing a flash of Cas in this thin white loony-bin uniform, draped in his overly large trenchcoat, barefoot and alone in Purgatory (which he imagined to be somewhat like Hell, but with more variety). Sure, Cas had a record for being resurrected, but it's not like he was dead when he fell into Purgatory – and since it was a realm unto itself, would it prevent Cas from returning to Heaven if he were killed in there? Or would he cease to exist? His throat tightened as he remembered Crowley's words, and wondered if Cas would regenerate, forever being hunted by monsters.

The wind ruffled his hair and slipped chilly fingers down the back of his jacket, snapping him out of his reverie and back to the dimming world. He glanced at his brother, realizing that he hadn't moved a bit, still staring at the phone in his hand. "Dean?"

Mutely, Dean handed over his open phone, face frozen in mild surprise. Sam seized it, recognizing the hints of alarm in his older brother and quickly scanned the screen.

It was a text message.

Sender: 1(617)xxx-xxxx ext. xxxx

Subject: -

Message: SOS CASTIEL SOS CASTIEL SOS CASTIEL SOS CASTIEL SOS


	3. Stumped

**Note:** So the beginning is taking much longer than I'd anticipated. Yes, I know, you're all just tired of waiting for the second main star of the show to make his grand appearance. But you DO know that Cas's signature just-rolled-out-of-bed look takes hours to perfect, right? Or just a romp with Dean behind the scenes – and they're not minute men. He'll be here soon! Just… a little scarce in this chapter.

Please review! Every reviewer gets a chance to win a copy of a hidden camera Destiel sex tape!*

*Please note that the author may not be able to procure the tape alive once they find the hidden camera.

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**Act II: Stumped**

"Look, I just need a tiny detail about 'Patient X'," a haggard-looking woman begged, "I have a deadline in three hours, and my boss is on my ass about this guy. Who is he? Just how is he mutated? Is it contagious? From what I heard he has wings-"

"The patient doesn't have wings," the nurse behind the counter corrected, "I can only tell you already-published information: Doe was accepted into our hospital yesterday at 6:03pm, bleeding severely from two points on the back. We cannot release anything else at this time-"

"But there have been reports by witnesses that the guy appeared out of thin air, bleeding and emitting light," a bespectacled man interrupted from behind the woman, his visitor's tag labeling him another journalist. "If he's just another Doe shot off the streets there wouldn't be so many guards in this hospital-"

"-unless he's worth hiding. Tell me, is he more _X-Men_ or _Angel_-"

Two tall nurses in pink scrubs and facial masks slipped by the nurse station, keeping their eyes on their coffee and watches, determinedly avoiding eye contact with the harassed nightshift nurses and desperate journalists. They walked by the scrutiny of a few guards, all of whom looking equally as delighted to be stuck on the graveyard shift at 3am on a Friday morning.

"Well, they're not too far off the mark," the shorter nurse muttered. "But it's like naming a dog 'Cat', or a cow 'Horse'. Why would you name a vampire 'Angel'?"

Sam rolled his hazel eyes over his blue cotton mask, ignored his brother's comment and continued his reinforcement before they'd passed by the nurse's station. "Look, I know he's turned up in a hospital out of the blue before, but what are the chances that it'll happen again? We can't count on God bouncing Cas back every time he dies-"

"I know," Dean griped, scanning the numbers on the doors they passed in the dimly-lit, sterile hall. "But if he's in here, I'm not walking out without him."

"I'm not telling you to," Sam interrupted, slowing down as they neared their number, "I'm just telling you not to get your hopes up. Winchester curse, remember?"

"Well aren't you a bedpan of sunshine," Dean muttered as he swung open the door to room 347. He nodded to the nurse dressed identically to them zoning out in the seat by the window. "Hey, you're on break from guard duty," he said casually, holding the coffee aloft in one hand, "we're covering for you."

The nurse nodded gratefully, grabbed the coffee, and was about to slouch past them when Sam spoke what Dean had been wondering: "hey, uh, what's with the-?"

The nurse's brown eyes darted back into the room, at the window and at the white tiles beneath their feet in the doorway. "Oh, yeah. Doe wouldn't let the docs help until those symbols were down. Apparently, the second he was done with the tape and salt he KO'd. Probably new-age Wiccan or something," he said dismissively, saying the last bit over his shoulder as he walked down the hall towards the nurse's station.

A look passed between Dean and Sam. Then they stepped over the devil's trap sketched in masking tape on the floor, locking the door behind them.

The dim hospital room was standard, with white tiles, blank walls, a floor lamp, and a single curtained-off bed. Judging by the shadow cast on the curtains, the patient seemed to be sound asleep with their hands curiously propped up in the air. Dean swiftly approached, while Sam followed cautiously, drawing the gun stuck in his waistband. A quiet crunch beneath their feet notified them of the ring of salt poured around underneath the curtains.

Sam blinked and drew his pistol, sure he'd seen a flicker behind the curtains. He lay the nose of the gun by the curtain, aiming for the approximate location of the patient's head. He knew his brother was hopeful – but when were they ever lucky? He watched Dean steel himself and slowly draw the curtain aside.

"Cas…?"

For a second, Dean saw a shadowy, rumpled nest of thin cotton on the gurney, peeled from the center where an expanse of pale skin was bared between arms set in casts bent at the elbow, sticking up from the sheets. He felt the tight knots in his neck start to loosen, the heady clouds of elation and relief start to settle. Flesh and bones heal, whereas being banished eternally in Purgatory was decidedly terminal. But something was off – the arms were far too short, and placed far too high on the body; the casts were rumpled, wrapped crudely – it looked almost as if they were _fuzzy_, with the tips of the casts matted with dark, coagulated blood –

Then the details pieced together in a horrifying moment, just as he heard Sam gasp behind him. Dean watched in almost detached shock as a drop of blood ran down from a hacked stump, dribbling a scarlet thread in the soft down by the bone, until it glided down a long, white wing feather and stained the pale shoulder blade below.

The next moment was a blur of movement and loud pulsing from his ears as he drew level with the head of the gurney on his knees, shouting, "Cas! Cas?" _You have to be okay, you have to tell me that those raw skewers speared in your back are not your holy flappers – you've never even had wings –! _He was distantly aware of shaking Cas's shoulder as Sam said something in the background, watching the short, dark hair flop on his friend's closed eyes –

They suddenly snapped open, and Dean registered the shoulder he was grasping flex an instant before his vision was somewhat obscured by the hand grasping his forehead, fingers digging into his skin and temples. "Castiel? No - _how did you find me?_" a hoarse voice snarled.

"Let him go," Sam said somewhere to Dean's side, in that serious-I'll-fuck-you-up tone he knew so well. The order was punctuated with the metallic cocking of his gun.

"Answer me!" The hand holding his skull started to tremble, then glow with dim flickers of blue-white light.

_Shit. This is gonna go nuclear_. "Hold on!" Dean shouted, holding up a hand to both of them blindly. "He's gone! But we got his SOS, and the number traced to this room in this hospital."

There was a beat of silence.

"Show me."

Dean cautiously reached a hand into his jeans pocket underneath his scrubs, and slowly pulled out his cell phone. Squinting against the flickers of light, he clicked on the text and held it up, hearing fabric rustle then the phone being pulled from his grip. It gave him enough time to sort out both the bitter and sweet realisation that this patient wasn't his best friend; that Dean hadn't found him, but also had not found him with the sawn remains of what were once whole, white wings. The image of Cas stuck in perpetual Hell spiked through his skull, and he could feel the usual grim determination tense his muscles all over again as his resolve returned. He could ignore the guilt by concentrating on controlling the thrum of danger from feeling a smoking gun (well, a grace-filled hand) holding his highly-combustible melon.

"What are your names?" The question was softer in tone, but the grip tightened on Dean's head.

"Hey, I'm Dean Winchester. That's my brother, Sam. And as far as handshakes go, this is just awesome," Dean said dryly.

A note of suspicion crept into the high-pitched voice. "Prove it. Show me the scars you bear from when my brother pulled you from Perdition – or I will smite you with the last of my grace, _hunters_." The title was spat out like an insult, accompanied with a burst of light from the direction of the voice.

_Huh, a chick angel. Dying?_ Dean pushed aside the question as he rolled up the sleeves of his scrubs to the tops of his shoulders, baring the handprint scars raised on his deltoids. No matter how many times he was brought back to life or healed, the handprints had always remained.

Seconds stretched. He could hear each of their breaths, how Sam was uneasily shifting his weight. Then a long, drawn-out sigh punctuated the silence. "_Fuck_."

"Why is that the usual reaction we get now?" Dean muttered to Sam, and he could almost feel Sam rolling his eyes at him.

The grip slackened and Dean pulled away, getting to his feet while Sam tugged the floor lamp into the opening in the curtains, turning the salt-lined area around the gurney into a makeshift interrogation room of sorts. A slender girl in her mid-twenties glared up at them as she sat up from lying on her belly, the hospital gown worn backwards to allow the mutations on her back to stick out comfortably. The light glistened off the beads of sweat trailing from her short, dark hair as pain twisted her pale face. Her skin was marked all over with scrapes, burns, and bandages. Her bruised eyes flickered between grey and electric blue in time with the sparks of grace lancing in tiny thunder bolts from the stumps of her useless wings. She looked a bit like a wounded bird, hostile about being grounded.

"I call for Castiel, and his apes show up," she muttered bitterly, "typical."

Dean shrugged it off. They'd been called worse. "So that SOS was yours."

The angel shuddered, and crossed her arms on the gurney, looking more like a sick girl trying to keep her act together than an almighty soldier of the Lord. "I sent it to Castiel. It found you instead, thanks to his grace in your scars; probably while you were physically touching your phone," she replied flatly.

Repression was just a reflex now, and Dean quelled _that_ new bit of info before it could sidetrack him from the conversation. "What happened to you?" Sam asked sympathetically, completely buying into the helpless-bird act, "how did-"

A disorienting _POP_ and a flash of light blinded them. Dean flung up his fists defensively as he blinked the green-purple afterimage away, noting the sudden darkness in within the curtains. He glanced over – the lamp bulb had exploded, stuttering sparks from its head. The machines lining the headboard of the gurney were beeping and flashing alarmingly, going haywire. But he couldn't focus on anything but the breath-taking light show in front of him. Tiny lightning bolts threaded out erratically from the angel's stumps, as if she were the center of an 80's plasma globe and the curtains around them were the glass dome (slowly being perforated by the electric filaments). Her eyes glowed blue, but seemed to be getting dimmer with each flicker.

"As you can see, I don't have much time left in this vessel," the angel said wryly above the noise of the machines. A sheen of sweat glistened on her skin, accentuating her rapid and shallow breathing. "I'm leaking out of it."

"You're _leak_-?"

"-If you're still on Castiel's side, you _have_ to find him," she interrupted, a note of pleading in her command. "Tell him to warn whoever is left that we are being hunted and slaughtered. Not just by abominations anymore – _humans_."

Sam cast a worried glance at the closed hospital door and tucked his gun back in his waistband under his scrubs. "All the angels we've met didn't have wings, at least not when they were in their vessels," he said as he looked at what remained of hers curiously, bordering on accusation, "so if you _are_ an angel, what happened to you?"

A pulse of electricity flared, and they both shielded their faces from it. Tiny lines of fires raked over the exposed skin of their arms, and the faint whiff of singed meat wafted in the air.

"They _burned_ me into this vessel," she snarled, eyes now flaring white as grace pulsed like lightning from her back, "then they trapped my grace in these wings and –"

A series of loud thumps interrupted her from the door. "Open up! We've got the crash cart!"

She seized Dean's wrists (being closer than Sam), electricity lazily threading down her arm to burn thin, angry lines above her grip on him. The machines continued to shriek, flashing red. She didn't seem to be paying attention to anything anymore, but to implore him almost desperately, "_find him_. _Please_. He was a god once – he can do _something_ –"

Cas's fate was on the tip of Dean's tongue when the light in the angel's burning eyes stuttered, then faded to flat, matte grey. It was only thanks to his and Sam's reflexes that they somehow caught her as she crumpled over the side of the gurney, feeble sparks of white-blue electricity twisting from the hacked stumps on her back. Her eyes were closed, face slack in unconsciousness.

"Is she-?" Sam asked.

Dean felt for her pulse on her throat. "Still alive."

"Dean, what do we do? We can't just leave her-"

"And how the hell are we supposed to get her past the army of doctors outside the door?"

"Fine. We'll come back-"

They shut up as the wings of the KO'd angel seemed to glow the customary blue-white of grace for a moment. Then quickly, one by one the feathers disappeared, until nothing was left but a smooth expanse of creamy skin over her unmarred shoulder blades.

She stirred, blinking open sleepy eyes, casting a confused look around her head at the noisily excited machines, then focusing on Dean. "Who are-?"

The door slammed open, and a harassed medical team wheeled their equipment in as another nurse flicked on the lights. Dean and Sam moved aside for them, taking the opportunity to head for the door as the doctors focused on the bewildered girl lying on the gurney. Dean chanced one last glance behind him before they ducked out the door, holding her eyes with his enough to register their colour.

They were brown.

* * *

Streetlights flashed by, then flicked off as the dawn rose quietly beyond the windows the Impala, heralded by birds as they drove into increasingly more rural areas. The hospital and their ditched scrubs were a couple hours of driving behind them, the events of their long day rendering them quiet and pensive for much of it. Sam was slumped against the passenger window, hair falling into his eyes as he seemed to doze. Dean was more or less making himself enjoy the simple pleasure of driving from point A to point B – no complications, no monsters, no drama…

"We should help them," Sam muttered, breath fogging the window.

"No. What we _should_ do is take a break. The world needs to cut us some freaking slack," Dean griped, glaring over the steering wheel. "We ganked Dick - what – _two days_ ago. Forty-eight hours. I need a vacation, goddamnit."

"But you remember what Cas said," Sam continued, straightening up in his seat, "that heaven was empty of angels, and if there were any still alive then they were in hiding. She was clearly one of the remaining survivors after the leviathans tried to commit genocide. And now they're being hunted-"

"Yeah, I don't buy that. Why would hunters want an angel's wings?" Dean said dismissively. "It's probably another monster mash. They can duke it out, hopefully they'll just kill each other off."

"That's the thing, we don't have enough information," Sam persisted, "if there _are_ humans out there who can force an angel into a vessel and trap their grace in physical wings, then _hack them off_, we need to find out why and how they're doing it. You know we're gonna end up on this case sooner or later anyway."

Dean continued to focus solely on the white lines zipping by on the black asphalt of the highway, remembering the angel's desperation. It occurred to him that they never learned her name.

Sam looked out the windshield, avoiding Dean's eyes as he said quietly, "I think we owe it to Cas."

The strumming of a guitar riff rang from Dean's pocket, saving him from the storm of emotions he was clenching down on at hearing the note of acceptance in Sam's voice. He'd accepted Cas's death whereas Dean's very strong force of denial was still locking him in place, to that time just after he'd woken up in SucroCorp when Crowley had dumped the fallen angel's sacrifice at his feet.

He grabbed the phone, driving one-handed as he put it to his ear. "Hel-?"

"_SAM?! DEAN_-"

"Whoa, crank down the volume!" Dean shouted into the receiver as he pulled the car over on to the shoulder. He switched the call to speaker as Sam shot him an inquiring look. "Who the hell is this?"

"It's Chuck and your friend just ditched this screaming kid here and _what the fuck_ is going on?!"

In between Chuck's yells there did seem to be more screams and shouts going on in the background, although it was hard to tell with the poor quality of the cheap phone's microphone. Sam's eyebrows were floating up to his hairline and Dean could feel his own mimicking his brother's as they both focused on the phone clenched in his hand.

"Wait, it looks like he wants to – _ouch_ -"

"DEAN? SAM?"

They shared a confused look at the new speaker on the phone, who had seemingly snatched it out of Chuck's hand. But the bursts of hyperventilation on the speaker keyed Dean's memory. "…_Kevin_?"

"Oh my God, it's you! I thought he was going to keep me there-"

"Okay, just slow down Kevin, and _breathe_." Dean instructed, unable to stop the beginnings of an incredulous smile from tugging his lips, mirroring Sam's exuberant fist-pump in the car. "Where are you right now? Are you safe?"

"I – I don't know, that crazy angel just dropped me off at this guy's house- _is he a leviathan_?"

"Crazy ang- you mean Cas? Castiel?" Sam interrupted, frozen with his fist in the air. "He's _alive_?"

"_Yes_, but-"

"Wait, everyone just _hold on_ for a second," Dean ordered, including his denial reflex insisting that good luck like this just didn't happen to them. "Kevin, switch the phone on to speaker. Don't worry about Chuck, he's harmless. ("Hey!") Now, tell us what happened from the beginning. What happened to you at SucroCorp?"

Kevin seemed to take a breath and slowed down his words, "I think just after that Roman guy exploded at SucroCorp, Castiel grabbed me and teleported us or something to this gold room. Then he went off somewhere after locking me inside, and he didn't come back until five minutes ago, saying that he'd be taking me back to Earth but somewhere safe. And he also told me to tell you guys not to call him unless it's an emergency, and even then to think twice."

Stunned silence reigned after Kevin delivered the last of his instructions on both sides of the call. The only sound was the thrum of the Impala's engine. Sam seemed to be working through stages of disbelief, while Dean kind of froze, unwilling to examine the shit storm of emotions flying around inside his mind. Flashes of Dick Roman, Bobby, the flightless angel's face, and Cas's own whipped through his eyes, sweeping tides of confused emotions together into a snarled mess.

He grasped on the most familiar: pissed-off.

"_**Fuck** that, we're calling_."


End file.
